Yesterday on the floor of the United States Senate, Amy Klobuchar spoke out on the continued rise in gas prices and offered her perspective on possible solutions. The first part of the speech connects the realities of rising fuel costs to the people living in Minnesota and chastising George W. Bush for not realizing that gas is well on its way to $4 per gallon.

Parts two and three of the speech can be found over at MNMuseTube. In these subsequent clips, Klobuchar addresses some of the technical issues surrounding the current state of oil and gas prices.

Money Quotes:

The fact is, this administration has failed to provide Americans with a meaningful energy policy that would provide relief from high gas and energy prices.

We should be investing not in the oil cartels of the Middle East but in the farmers and workers of the Midwest. We need better fuel efficiency standards in our cars.

It is time this administration stepped up and did something about it. If we are going to be doing business with Saudi Arabia and some of these countries, this administration should have the leverage to push for more oil from OPEC.

In conclusion, the cost of energy is hurting Americans from all walks of life and businesses. I don't think we need one silver bullet. As we say in my State, we need a silver buckshot. We need a bold energy policy, first of all, in the short term, that focuses on temporarily suspending deliveries of oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, that pressures OPEC nations to increase oil production, that closes the Enron loophole to eliminate that speculation, and to establish the DOJ Oil and Gas Market Fraud Task Force.

Political Muse

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